Longwood University

Longwood University is a public liberal arts university in Farmville, Virginia. Founded in 1839 as Farmville Female Seminary Association, it is the third-oldest public university in Virginia and one of the hundred oldest institutions of higher education in the United States. Longwood became a university on July 1, 2002.

Three undergraduate academic colleges—the Cook-Cole College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Business and Economics, and the College of Education and Human Services—supported by the Cormier Honors College and coupled with the College of Graduate and Professional Studies serve an enrollment of 5,096.

Longwood was founded in 1839 as the Farmville Female Seminary Association. Led by Solomon Lea, a Methodist minister who had taught at Randolph–Macon College, the school flourished. Lea left to become the first president of Greensboro Female Seminary (now Greensboro College) in his native North Carolina, and several presidents and name changes followed in the subsequent decades. Led by a number of Methodist ministers, the school offered English, Latin, Greek, French, and piano